Innovation

Protecting the health and safety of our beaches and coastal waterways – treasured sources of recreation and natural beauty – is a top priority for the oil and natural gas industry. To reduce the risk of accidental groundings and spills, prospective tanker pilots are using virtual reality technology to get extensive hands-on training before they ever take the wheel of a ship.

The breakthrough of horizontal drilling has revolutionized the search for new reserves of oil and natural gas, enabling our industry to recover resources located under sensitive habitats without harm and produce more oil and natural gas from fewer wells.

America’s 180,000 retail service stations hold over 2 billion gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel at any given time – primarily in underground tanks – ready to deliver the fuel you need to get to work, school, shopping and home again.

Crude oil storage tanks are used to regulate the flow of oil between production wells and the trucks or pipelines that will transport it to the refinery. Although crude oil usually is only stored for a short period, natural gas dissolved in the crude oil can vaporize and collect at the top of the tank. Vapor recovery units have be fitted onto storage tanks to collect these so-called “fugitive emissions” for use as fuel and reduce the chances that gas vapors will be released into the environment.

New natual gas reserves are vital to guaranteeing a steady supply of affordable fuel to power our cars, heat and cool our homes, generate electricity and preserve Americans' quality of life. Large amounts of methane, or natural gas, are stored inside of coal. In the past, coalbed methane was primarily a hazard to coal miners and was vented to the atmosphere during mining. Now, new technology allows this natural gas to be produced for use in our homes, electrical generation plants and factories. The result, coalbed methane is now a significant part of our Nation's natural gas supply and less methane, an important greenhouse gas, is released to the atmosphere.

Gas hydrates – natural gas and water frozen together into a solid substance – are common in arctic permafrost regions and in sediments in the ocean's deep waters. Research is now underway to better understand this vast, untapped resource: how natural gas hydrates form, where they are located and how they could be used as a future source of natural gas.

In recent decades, great improvements in vehicle efficiency and emissions reductions have been made. Changes that energy companies made to gasoline and diesel fuels enabled and enhanced some of these advances. Despite a much greater number of cars and trucks on American roads over this time, the combination of technologies has resulted in improved air quality.